subject: Good Intentions and How to Keep Them [print this page] Good Intentions and How to Keep Them Good Intentions and How to Keep Them
I never get enough sleep.
I stay up late at night, cause I'm Night Guy. Night Guy wants to stay up late. 'What about getting up after five hours sleep?', oh that's Morning Guy's problem. That's not my problem, I'm Night Guy. I stay up as late as I want.
So you get up in the morning, you're exhausted, groggy, oooh I hate that Night Guy!
See, Night Guy always screws Morning Guy. There's nothing Morning Guy can do. The only Morning Guy can do is try and oversleep often enough so that Day Guy looses his job and Night Guy has no money to go out anymore.
(from Jerry Seinfeld - The Glasses)
In a funny way we are a new person every day, or even several new persons each day. We are "Night Guy" and "Day Guy". Commitments, promises, obligations, good intentions do not come all that natural to us, in a way we often need to force ourselves to do certain things. But who enforces, and who is being forced? Who is that "weaker self" and who that implied "stronger self" to overcome it?
Day 1: I am eating way too much fast food. Starting tomorrow I will eat exclusively healthy, organic food!
Why tomorrow? Well, today is already half-gone, I may have already broken my new rule today, tomorrow morning seems like a clean cut, and anyway I still have that urge today. I will binge one last time on fast food and then be done with it forever.
Day 2: Hmm, I am quite hungry and I have a strong urge for something sugary sweet.
But wait, there is a new rule in place by that guy who was here yesterday, saying that I can't. Who is he to tell me what to do? Who gave him the power to dictate terms, I had no say in this, why should I feel bound by his arbitrary rules. Who does he think he is?
When overcoming our "weaker self" it is essential to accept new intentions during the day they are made, today, to make sure we would find them acceptable if yesterday's "me" had made them and to implement them straight away. If there is resistance or doubt in our mind, we need to find what is holding us back, why this is not really what we want.
All talk of "I should", "I want", "I will" is often just a cheap escape into the realm of the hypothetical. If we really wanted to change our behavior then we would do so, effortlessly, as it is fully in our power. Any resistance is a sign of our fears and doubts and addiction to the status quo. We need to become aware of these, recognize and accept them.
If on the other hand we are convinced by a new intention then it might still be a challenge to overcome old habits, but it has nothing to do with "will power" or "self-discipline" in a narrow sense. We simply follow our new self-image, adopt new habits and change our behavior without much exertion at all, with a clear and intrinsically desirable goal in mind.
